Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/147

Aberdeen professor of the old school used to tell a slow student to keep a "gleg" ear, and just let his prelections "seap" in. The Orcadian sab means to saturate. Pieces were eaten to the last crust, and pouches "reipet" for mülins (crumbs), while the shady banks of the ditches were searched for soorocks (sorrel), and the dank spots in the woods for Caliban's earth-nuts, or lucy-awrnits, as they were called. For botanising was pursued with the practical purpose of the primitive man, and spoils secured for use or pleasure. Pet rabbits, our mappies, claimed the sookies (clover blooms) and the grundie-swallie, for groundsel was known by its Anglo-Saxon name of "grunde-swyligie," or "grunde-swilie" (what swells over the ground). "Little goodje" (sun spurge) was plucked for its astringent, milky juice, infallible against warts, while the benty dunes were searched for the roots which passed for the savoury liquorice (Common Rest-Harrow). The elder furnished a boon-tree gun or tow-gun, the elm a whistle, the hemlock a spoot-gun, while the brown, withered leaves of the tussilago or colt's-foot—"dishie-logie" it was called—were eagerly utilised as a substitute for tobacco, and smoked, "with diffeeculty," in a "partan's tae." When the girls played at shops the seed-capsules of the docken passed for sugar and tea, while the sweeties were the "nirled" catkins of the alder, since they resembled the genuine "curly-andrew," or sugared coriander seed. More serious was the midday divination with that humble weed, the rib-wort. When the leaf was broken off the exposed ribs were held to forecast the number of pawmies to be faced in the afternoon. The long seed-tipped stalk of this plantain, the "curly-doddy," furnished a weapon for mimic cuts and slashes—in the effort to break off each his opponent's stalk. More formidable sword-play was done with a kail-runt or a clump of the malodorous weebie, as the yellow and ever-assertive rag-wort was called. The name "weebie," seemed to have been strictly local. In the north-east the plant is the "stinkin Elshender." Of old it was called bun-weed. Thus in Holland's "Buke of the Howlat" (circa 1450) the Jay as the Juggler could carry the cup from the king's table, "syn leve in the sted hot a blak bun-wed." The name is still used all over Ulster. Can it be that "weebie" is just "bunwede" inverted? Such a careful philologist as M. Amours, in editing Holland